Travelling intimacies, translation and betrayal in a creative geography

Abstract

In 2019, we collaborated with German theatre artists to co-create Between Worlds: Outsourcing Dementia Care, an immersive, multi-media piece performed in Newcastle and Berlin. This performance work animated and staged our interviews conducted with the owners of and caregivers working in private care facilities recently built in northern Thailand to provide dementia care for overseas guests from across the Global North. This creation process also drew from interviews we conducted with the family members who had chosen this option for their loved ones with dementia. Incorporating elements of documentary theatre, movement and cinematic projection, Between Worlds was designed to bring audiences into an intimate space, drawing them close to the complexities of the outsourcing of dementia care in order to prompt public conversation and reflection on dementia care in both Thailand and the Global North. Here, we consider the performance of the play and the method that our theatre collaborators used to render transparent the process of translation within performance. We critically assess the outcome to question the possible betrayals implicit in creative and social science work and in the doing of cultural geography.